The Neuroscience Obsession: Good or Bad for Psychology?

Anyone who has looked at job advertisements in psychology departments lately knows that neuroscientists are being hired into these departments in droves. Almost every psychology job advertisement that I have seen in the past 3 years (at least) has been looking for candidates who specialize in some kind of neuroscience - cognitive neuroscience, clinical neuroscience, social neuroscience, affective neuroscience, and on and on.

Many people think this is a good development. The 2013 New York Times obituary for Candace Pert, who helped to discover endorphins, said that she was pleased that psychology was "finally becoming scientific." In a 2008 paper, University of Pennsylvania neuroethicist Stephen Morse used the term "folk psychology" to refer to the study of values, beliefs, intentions, and other constructs that cannot be directly observed. Now that we can directly observe the brain through neuroimaging and other brain-scanning technologies, why do we need to study people's thoughts and feelings?

There are many ways in which the neuroscience movement has facilitated important breakthroughs. We are learning about the specific parts of the brain that are damaged through drug and alcohol use, the brain structures that are damaged by Alzheimer's disease and other degenerative conditions, and the brain regions that are activated by specific social and cultural cues. We are learning about how the brain develops in childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, and about the connections between brain development and reckless behavior in the teens and early 20s. We are learning about how people's brains react when they are facing conditions of severe threat or stress.

Few would argue that these aren't all extremely important steps forward for science. It is clearly essential that neuroscience be well represented within psychology, and that neuroscience research be funded by government agencies.

But does the value of neuroscience mean that other areas of psychology are suddenly unimportant? Young people today are facing an uncertain and difficult job market; the Western world is witnessing a wave of immigration unlike any other in recent history; and the problems of genocide, terrorism, and group violence are badly in need of psychological insights. What can neuroscience contribute to helping us help young people navigate a difficult job market that requires strong self-direction and resilience? How can brain imaging help immigrants to adjust to their new homelands and to raise well-adjusted children? How can brain science help us to understand and prevent terrorism and genocide? Or do other areas of psychology, outside of neuroscience, have more to tell us about these important social issues?

Few scholars would say that the issues enumerated in the previous paragraph are not important, or that psychology does not have a role in addressing them. However, if we use hiring practices as a reasonable proxy for the values that the field holds as a whole, then we would conclude that brain science represents the lion’s share of what is valued within psychology. We do not see many positions advertised seeking candidates who study development of self-direction, identity, and agency in adolescence and the transition to adulthood; who study cultural adjustment in immigrants; or who study terrorism. We do not see positions advertised for candidates who study self-esteem and well-being. Bill Swann and his colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin published a landmark article in the American Psychologist several years ago (Swann, Chang-Schneider, & Larsen-McClarty, 2007) demonstrating persuasively that people’s self-views are important – but the only job openings in Swann’s own department this year are neuroimaging positions. Why is this? Although psychology seems to recognize the importance of various subdisciplines, why is neuroscience so heavily dominating hiring trends within our field?

A likely answer involves not only scientific values and progress, but also money. Two of the National Institutes of Health agencies that have traditionally supported behavioral research—the National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)—are now directed by biologists with little interest in psychological or mental processes. The director of NIMH, Tom Insel, is a biologist and primate researcher who has cast mental illnesses as brain disorders (Insel, 2009, 2010). The director of NIDA, Nora Volkow, is a biologist who has characterized addiction as a brain disease (Volkow, Fowler, & Wang, 2004). Neither of these directors—both of whom are medical doctors—accord much importance to mental or psychological processes in their writings (Satel & Lilienfeld, 2013). Having worked in a medical school for more than 13 years, I can tell you that the vast majority of training provided to medical doctors is biologically oriented. Particularly in psychiatry, in which both Insel and Volkow specialize, biological research is encouraged to the exclusion of psychosocial or other types of work (Stone, Whitham, & Ghaemi, 2012).

So what do Insel, Volkow, and their biologically based interests have to do with psychology? Consider the following excerpt from a job advertisement posted by the psychology department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:

“The Department of Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is hiring an Assistant Professor with expertise in biological models of psychopathology, including the study of biomarkers, psychophysiological processes, neuroimaging, and/or genetics/epigenetic processes relevant to psychopathology in youth or adults.”

What is most striking about this advertisement is that it aligns almost perfectly with Tom Insel’s funding priorities at NIMH. Although it is certainly conceivable that the department is intrinsically interested in biological processes associated with psychopathology, it is also quite possible that the university is seeking to use the advertised position to increase its competitiveness for grant dollars.

Is this good or bad for psychology? To the extent to which the neuroscience movement is driven by scientific priorities, values, and progress, and to the extent to which room is left for other areas of psychology to flourish, there may be much in this movement that is good for psychology as a field. However, to the extent to which the dominance of neuroscience within psychology’s value system (as indexed by hiring practices) is driven by desires to secure grant funding rather than by the scientific needs of the field, what does this mean for our students, our clients, and the world that we are entrusted to serve? Are pressing social issues destined to be neglected by psychology because the funding agencies are run primarily by biologists? Twenty years from now, will most of us even be able to recognize psychology as a field? Will we be teaching our students what they need to know? Will we be providing the essential insights and services that the world needs from us?

Clearly, neuroscience has much to contribute to our field, but so do many other subdisciplines within psychology. It is up to us, as a community of scholars, to decide what the future of our field should be. Neuroscience has a place at the table, but it is our responsibility—not Insel’s or Volkow’s—to decide what that place should be. We all know that grant money is important, but it cannot be the driving force behind the decisions that we make regarding the direction of our field.

unfortunately, The people who would benefit as you have suggested from "psychology "that doesn't require some type of medication for them to heal or function, simply can't afford the cost of a psychologist for treatment and it would not be covered under health insurance.

Can you imagine getting the government, Republicans and Democrats alike, to agree and to pay for, helping young people's psychological responses to navigate a difficult job market and help immigrants to adjust to their new homelands and to raise well-adjusted children? They won't even provide food for these people. The problem lies in the health insurance industry in my opinion.

This situation suggests that neuroscientists assume they can handle phenomenology without the help of other kinds of psychology- at the very least.
I'm sure neuroscientists don't consult an MRI to check if they're in love-[ maybe their heart rate.

observed this development with great interest, I would like to suggest that counseling is important, above all, because of the healing effects of trusted connection with another. This is something that drugs can never supply, and it is vitally important to human wellbeing and healing. Emphasized this in the press. See, for example, "Social Connection Makes a Better Brain" http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/10/social-connection-makes-a-better-brain/2...

In my observation, instead of focusing attention on the most powerful element counselors have to offer, which drugs cannot, I've observed a lot of silly stone-walling among psychologists. This includes ill-advised, unscientific attempts to pretend (and insist) that behavioral addictions aren't scientifically "real," unfounded beliefs about sex and an almost total lack of understanding of how it affects the brain, groundless claims that porn addiction is "sex" and therefore harmless, too, etc.

By refusing to understand and acknowledge the new research on behavioral addiction and sexual conditioning (and therefore giving poor advice to those suffering), psychologists have helped to make themselves irrelevant to a whole group of clients whom they might have helped enormously, given that addiction is an attachment disorder.

Why not encourage your profession to focus on its strengths and true gifts instead of trying to claim that "reality is what we say it is?"

Psychology and psychiatry claim to be sciences, but they are not simply because nearly all of their hypotheses are non-falsifiable: a prerequisite of the scientific method is that a hypothesises must be falsifiable and that it must be derived from verifiable evidence.

Both fields are still based heavily on the works of two psychotics and anti-science pioneers: Freud and Jung. Even Freud's wife had serious doubts about him and Jung despised science with a vengeance.

Pop psychology, traditional psychology, and traditional psychiatry are obviously pseudosciences and rightly threatened by the findings of modern biology and neuroscience. Conversely, pop neuroscience (invariably reported in the mass media) threatens modern evidence- and science-based psychology and psychiatry.

I have seen three articles about the supposed mechanisms and importance of human sleep on this website based on one study performed on mice. These are superb demonstrations of neuroscience being turned into pop neuroscience for the purpose of sensationalism and blogger self promotion.

Why are these pop pseudosciences believed and revered? Simply because the audience is too lazy and/or inept to read and understand the cited study and is too lazy to learn critical thinking skills. Hey, critical thinking bursts one's happy bubble of magical thinking and removes the comfort of being wrapped in pop pseudosciences.

Pete, I was going to save this for another blog entry, but I feel compelled to respond to your comment. I disagree strongly with your claim that psychology and psychiatry are unscientific - a claim based on two theorists who have been dead for more than half a century.

Science is a method, not a content area. As long as we observe a phenomenon (or read the literature), formulate testable hypotheses, conduct rigorous research, handle our data correctly, use the proper statistical tools, and report the findings objectively, we are doing "science." It doesn't matter whether we are analyzing survey data or mouse DNA. Many psychologists and psychiatrists conduct rigorous research that adheres to all of these guidelines. So I do not believe that traditional psychology has any reason to be threatened by neuroscience - except when it comes to funding and hiring opportunities (which have little to do with scientific merit, and everything to do with money).

I do agree with you regarding the ways in which research findings are covered in the media. Even my own research findings have been covered in ways that are not faithful to what was written in the article. It is OUR responsibility as scientists to educate the media, and the lay public, about what our findings mean. If the media get it wrong, we need to gently correct them.

Hi Seth, many thanks for your reply. I don't think we fundamentally disagree. Put it this way, if I wrote a blog on this website citing dozens of irrefutable references I'm sure you would clearly understand why I wrote my comment. I have no vested interests other than sincerely hoping that real science and evidence will increasingly benefit mankind and that quackery based on deceased nincompoops and their followers will fade away.

My comment was not aimed at you, it was an apparently failed attempt to help answer the question you asked in the title of your article.

When the media gets it wrong I believe we need to be far less than gentle in our response: the media is ruthless and considers a gentle response as either unworthy of addressing or worthy of ridicule (ad hominem attack).

To put it really simply, psychology is the hypothesis stage. Neuroscience is theory/fact.

I can study someone and guess what they have over the period of a year asking about behaviors, trying medications, recording progress or lack thereof.

Or, I can get that person into a cat scan and send in different chemicals/electrical impulses to fix the problem, provided we map out the human brain, scan the exact composition of someone's brain to understand the exact dose or what needs to be done to fix the issue.

Psychology is great and I think it's important to have as the guessing stage, but neuroscience is verifiable results and will eventually take over.

Very much agreed on the media too. The media should not have as much power as it does. They are not allowed to make mistakes when they are the only major source of information for a lot of people. The media is crap.

As it stands, Neuroscience is mostly an intellectual curiosity. Imaging scans provide what kind of meaningful clinical or therapeutic value? Well mostly none.

And while all this Neuroscience is being done, Pharma is getting out of CNS research because the benefit-risk of the R&D investments just don't make financial sense. I.e., the Neuroscience is providing few, if any meaningful therapeutic leads.

Psychotherapy may be obliterated by managed care, but there's nothing to take its place beyond the over-hyped, over-prescribed and under-disclosed dirty drug classes currently on the market.

This is an excellent article. As a recent PhD grad in the field of autism I have found it extremely difficult to find a research position that I have the prerequisite skills for. I actually looked at the position at Chapel Hill and then sadly went to pour another drink as I realized I wasn't the "type of psychologist" that the department was looking for. Conferences that were once dominated by psychologists are now dominated by biologists, geneticists, epigeneticists and the like. Not that this is a bad thing, and their work is valuable and is, or will most likely, lead to significant breakthroughs in the field, in time. The irony, however, is that the science driving intervention, and helping individuals with autism on a daily basis, is behavioral - psych 101. Maybe new psychologists are simply going to need to arm themselves with sufficient courses in genetics and/or biological systems to be able to "talk the talk" and remain competitive in the new (NIMH) marketplace. Ultimately, no matter the underlying system or mechanism, biological systems behave. And fortunately, this is what psychologists are good at studying.